Friday, September 27, 2013

Today was a longish drive in a transition day of our holiday. We had one of those before where we expected to be fighting the boredom all day. However, that day, when we drove from Fresno to Winnemucca turned out to be quite interesting, and today was also. We left Moab heading west on the next stage of our trip which will take us to Arizona. We left Moab after breakfast in a diner, where Caroline made the mistake of ordering pancakes. The waitress turned up with a plate load that could have fed a family of 4. Caroline tried valiantly, but was unable to clean her plate!

The road through central Utah was across high lands, and with varying landscapes. As a slight change from previous days, we skirted great canyons, one of which was a notorious hideout used by Butch Cassidy's gang, among others. There were also stark red mountains, forested mountains, and lush green valleys flanked by sedimentary rocky mountains. There were also some weird almost white rock formations that contrasted vividly with the mostly red mountains.

Secret Mesa, the canyon was a hideout for Butch Cassidy, among others

Our planned stop for the day was at the Fremont Indian State Park, where we learned about this Native American culture. There is a small, but very informative museum and walks which show off the massive amount of petroglyph's in the area. The visitor centre is situated a bird's eye view from the largest Fremont Indian settlement to be found. The Fremont culture is about 800-1500 years old and little is known about their way of life (I have learned that this culture invented moccasin's). They were a settled people, rather than nomadic as were some other native American peoples, they farmed, and were skilled at tool making but their wall paintings, and etchings are what Caroline and I (and countless others, no doubt) were there to see. The State Park, around the area of Clear Creek Canyon in Utah is filled with these wall etchings, We had to walk about 50 yards from the visitor's centre to start seeing them, and they are amazingly clear taking into account they are the best part of 1000 years old.

Fremont Indian Petroglyphs

Fremont Indian Petroglyphs

Fremont Indian Petroglyphs

The Fremont Indian State Park was over half way on our journey and left us with only about 2 hours of driving. The driving conditions were tiring as there was severe winds blowing across the state of Utah today. In fact, they are expecting snow next week according to a guy I was talking to in the amusingly named town of Beaver, Utah. Our final destination was Springdale which sits by the entrance to Zion National Park which we'll be exploring tomorrow. The road into Springdale was beautiful, rising from a valley near the interstate, up into more rocky red mountains along the Virgin River valley (this post is beginning to develop a theme!). We're staying at a place called Bumbleberry Inn, and I learned that this is named after the collection of numerous berries to be put into a pie, probably by some bumbling cook.